What are the steps involved in development of a XML report?

majority of report is XML-Based Why?!!!

i will tell u this steps in Oracle BI-PUblisher witch is used to reporting with oracle APEX SO:

1- Define data template

2- Create data definition and associate or upload data template

3- Define concurrent program to generate data XML output

4- Define RTF template using generated data XML

5- Registered the template with BI publisher

6- in Apex, add the registred template.

u can seen the output report in a lot of format, PDF, RTF, html, ......

u can Assign BI publisher with MS Word (BI-Publisher desktop) for creating template.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfDRDcA-vKo

Agree with the answer given by Mr.:Abdel razeak